


Zuzu's Petals

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Bisexuality, Infidelity, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-11
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-11-16 02:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Sam offers Blaine an olive branch, and somewhen falls in love.</p>
<p>(Spoilers through the beginning of season 4, but actually written before 4x04 aired. Purely speculative!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zuzu's Petals

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, this comes un-beta'd, so all mistakes are entirely my own and I take full responsibility for them. Born out of yet another conversation with a friend about how we think Sam could easily be a 2 on the Kinsey Scale, and how we think Blaine needs a friend before he eats himself alive.

Fall 2012, and there’s a low hum of sadness that hangs around the glee club now. Tina is sad because Mike is gone, and although it had been her decision to call it over before the hurting started, the pre-emptive strike has proved ineffective. There’s still a bone deep ache that lingers, and a tattoo on her hip that says “make change forever” but had said something entirely different for a short while. She remembers Mike Chang (no relation) every time she changes, every time she catches a glimpse of the letters etched into her skin, and it hurts a little in a way she hopes will eventually stop and kind of wishes never does. Sam hasn’t heard from Mercedes at all since she headed out to California, if you didn’t count a couple of generic group texts and the odd wall post on Facebook (or CityVille request, or the odd game of Draw Something since Sam is worse than useless at Words With Friends), and Brittany talks a lot about how hard it is to enjoy her favourite parts of loving Santana over Skype before testing the waters of madness by emulating Britney Spears, right down to the head shaving and the public meltdown (although perhaps no one would argue that Jacob hadn’t deserved it). The only upperclassman not wallowing in self-pity is Blaine, who seems, on the surface, to be determinedly upbeat and chipper, despite Kurt’s move and the readjustment that inevitably comes with it. 

Sam wonders, though, watching him singing, whether or not it’s harder for Blaine at all. After all, McKinley only ever meant something to him as the place where Kurt was, and whilst Kurt was still there they could protect one another from the whispers and the stares when they dared to hold hands or show any physical manifestation of their general intimacy, anything that Rachel and Finn could have done with barely a raised eyebrow. Sam’s only ever faced a fraction of those whispers himself, only a tiny percent, when people speculated over his sexuality when he’d been willing to both sing and dance with another boy (and a boy as glaringly out and ‘different’ as Kurt at that, whatever different meant), or over the fact the girl he’s dating is African-American, or that he dyes his hair (he doesn’t, or he sort of did, once, but he is blonde and he’s tired of justifying it anyway). 

Overall, though, watching Blaine, what Sam thinks he really needs right now is a friend. He’s managed to reach out to Brittany and find common ground with her, and he thinks it might be harder with Blaine since, on paper, they have less in common, but he sees Blaine in moments of quiet reflection and there’s a set to his mouth, a faraway look in his eyes, that Sam knows only too well. Blaine, when no one is watching him, exudes quiet resignation that says, clearly, he has given up living his life and will be treading water until it begins again, in a little under a year, in New York City. Sam may not be the brightest star in the constellation, but he knows Blaine can’t possibly survive in that state and so he reaches out, extends a branch towards him, and can only hope Blaine will begin to reach back. They can help each other in this void, he figures, and it may well only be for this one year but it will definitely go faster with two of them.

 

There are strange moments in befriending Blaine, Sam realises slowly. There’s the creeping realisation that Blaine’s supportiveness isn’t an act, that Blaine almost physically craves it, needs to feel useful. Sam finds that he is an accessible outlet for this part of Blaine’s personality, but falling into the role isn’t easy and he is hyper aware of the fact he isn’t Kurt. Sam isn’t really anyone’s idea of high maintenance, but he goes back to Blaine’s house with him sometimes after glee club, lets Blaine fix them something to eat - even if it’s only sandwiches - and then has Blaine help him with his homework, or with one of his speeches, or asks for his take on this year’s football team (Blaine thinks they have a shot this year, if the guys keep responding well to Coach Beiste, but the dynamic at McKinley is weird and he can’t really get a handle on it at all), and whether or not he thinks Sam’s skin could take a neutral colour because he’s seen this shirt he really likes... (Blaine says no almost immediately, barely lifting his head from studying his book with a concentrated little frown on his face, although he’s already read it once and knows how to answer the questions that will be posed on it. Preparation is, he thinks, the key. He wants to be able to quote page numbers if he has to. When he does look at Sam, he expounds that neutrals would wash Sam out completely; he’s too blonde for pastels. Sam nods amicably and picks his own book up, tries to make sense of the longer words, and wonders if he can just get Blaine to explain the plot again.) Sometimes, when he’s feeling braver or Blaine looks more lost and vulnerable than usual, Sam dares to ask him if he’s okay, how he’s really doing, and Blaine flicks on his tight little smile, effectively closes down his face, and says it’s nothing. He shrugs his “it doesn’t matter, ignore me” shrug, ducks his head and composes his face, and tries explaining Pygmalion one more time, and Sam knows better than to push.

As the bond between them strengthens, Sam begins to see flashes of the boy Blaine was the year before (or before Michael week, and Sebastian, and the slushie incident; before Karofsky’s suicide attempt and the crushing reminder that actually not all kids are as lucky as he and Kurt have actually been; before the pressure of being 17 and gay had made everything harder, despite them having one another to lean on). There are flashes of his natural exuberance, and that smile that could light a room given a chance, and his tendency to both want and need everyone to join him and love him, and - when he’s happy - Sam is finding that it’s incredibly difficult to not be charmed by him. (Sam also understands, in a slightly untouchable undefined way, that he is crushing on Blaine Anderson right now and he’ll never ever act on it but the feeling is there all the same, latent and potent and burning ice hot inside, and so he knows exactly why Kurt gets to fiercely protective and territorial - how can you not when Blaine is so charmingly oblivious about it?)

There’s also the realisation that Blaine actually is gay, in a Vogue Italia, excited about Isabelle Wright, bizarre knowledge of revival theater kind of way that isn’t initially super obvious. There’s the Blaine who knows college football results and rules, who knows nerdy comic books that Sam had thought no one else in _Ohio_ knew, much less in Lima, and there’s the Blaine who actually cares about his winter knitwear and whose love of Katy Perry isn’t at all ironic (this, on the back of an afternoon lying side-by-side on Blaine’s bed, flicking through Rolling Stone, while Blaine had read aloud the interesting excerpts from an article on the woman before sighing and admitting he thinks he maybe loves her, in an abstract way, because she’s perfect, which Sam hadn’t understood well enough to question, but there it is). Sam realises these things slowly, and loves them maybe a little, because Blaine is a mass of contradictions that make up the whole and the whole is wonderful to be around when it’s shining.

It’s the understanding the Blaine is _gay_ that makes Sam think perhaps he’ll find companionship in the girls in the same way Kurt always did. It’s not because he thinks of Blaine as a girl (Blaine definitely is not, and it’s not even that Sam thinks of Kurt as a girl, really, just that Kurt seemed at some point to have decided he was an honorary girl and that was that), so much as he thinks Blaine probably has more in common with Brittany and Tina than he has with him, but Blaine only cants his head and says, like it’s obvious, that Sam is fluent in Na’vi and halfway to fluent in Sindarin and he actually cares that Green Lantern is gay now and that Northstar married his boyfriend and that’s actually more than he’d expected of anyone left in Lima. And it’s definitely something the girls in the glee club do not get. (Sam is reassured that Blaine is not just making this up when he joins that superhero sidekick group, or dresses himself up as a wizard complete with the pointy hat, and Sam has a _lot_ of pointy hat jokes he could share but won’t for decency’s sake.) Yes, the girls may understand his loneliness better, but they don’t understand _him_ and that’s something Sam does without really trying.

Blaine’s loneliness, though, is the one thing Sam can’t seem to touch. Despite everything, sometimes Sam still catches Blaine staring into space, or standing in front of his locker gazing at that picture of him and Kurt, or staring at his phone like he’s waiting for it to ring (usually he is, or he’s waiting for an elusive text back with a look of resigned melancholy like he knows there won’t be a message, no matter how many times he checks). Blaine seems to be turning himself into a small island in the midst of their senior year, when they should be riding high. Blaine, as Sam sees him, needs to be able to hold someone, to be able to touch and care and buy them coffee and discuss wardrobe options and the interminable dullness of political history (Blaine loves social history, though) and the fact they’re showing My Fair Lady at the revival and Audrey is beautiful, isn’t she? Blaine is lonely, and Sam only knows one way to counter that.

 

It starts with winning the election for President, because as it turns out Brittany can be relied on to say something even more stupid than asserting that banning hair gel is tantamount to burning people and Sam loves Brit, he really does, but banning weekends and holidays was a terrible platform and Artie should have stopped that idea before it germinated. It starts at Breadstix, with Blaine’s realisation that actually, Kurt doesn’t care (he does, and Blaine is probably aware, deep inside underneath the crushed 17 year old), and Kurt is in New York, and Kurt is busy, and he did all of this _for_ Kurt and it doesn’t even matter... It starts with Sam saying that it does matter, because Blaine has shown him that gay people are people too or something, but it makes Blaine smile all the same and that’s really all Sam had been aiming for, because Blaine is beautiful when he smiles...

Something else starts (or becomes more tangibly real) with Sam sliding his arm around Blaine’s shoulder in a reassuring sideways hug that makes his heart skip and hammer to catch back up, because Blaine smells wonderful, a mix of cologne and bodyspray and deodorant and bodywash and _boy_ that is at once familiar and intensely unfamiliar and Sam doesn’t want to let him go. It progresses through Blaine’s smile being all for him occasionally (Sam answers a math problem correctly, or comes up with an interpretation of Gatsby’s green light without prompting) to Blaine’s hands warm and heavy (and big, _damn,_ his hands when they’re touching and holding and feeling) on Sam’s hips. It becomes full body hugs, Blaine’s body solid and real against his own, and there’s Blaine, burying his face in Sam’s chest, and Blaine’s fingers dusting lint from his lapels and adjusting his tie, tutting as he reties it in a perfect half-Windsor and really, has Sam learned nothing from show choir championships? Sam feels himself coming undone, his willpower dwindling daily, but he’s determined to respect Blaine’s boundaries because Blaine is firmly and unalterably unavailable. Despite their distance and their difficulties, Sam is hyper aware of the fact Blaine still considers himself to be one half of a partnership, and Sam is nothing more than a placeholder until he can hold the real object of his affection in his arms again.

And then there is Christmas, which sneaks up on them. Blaine asks him to come with him to see It’s A Wonderful Life at the revival (“In colour!” he says, eyes dancing just past gold, and Sam knows he’s already lost), and they can get coffee on the way back, perhaps, or something else, whichever Sam would rather. Sam agrees that coffee is just fine, and there’s mistletoe above the door of the Lima Bean when they enter. Sam sees it but Blaine does not, far too focussed on seasonal beverages and the smell of cinnamon. The Bean hasn’t been the same for Blaine since Kurt left but perhaps it’s okay just now, if Blaine’s face is an indicator, and he takes a seat, eases the lid from his coffee so he can dunk his biscotti, and enthuses wildly about Donna Reed and lets his face fall for Zuzu’s petals and Sam thinks perhaps he is relating the film to himself until he laughs when the bell above the door rings. Sam knows one thing with absolute clarity; he could love Blaine, if he had the chance. Instead, he bins Blaine’s empty cup and gestures for the door, and Blaine smiles easily at him as he waits for Sam to catch him up.

Sam knows there is no time like right now, right here, and catches Blaine’s face between his palms to kiss him beneath the mistletoe, which makes Blaine blush and stumble and kiss him back just once, chastely, before his smile lights up his face again. “Thank you,” he says and Sam thinks he’s forgotten how to breathe, because really, Blaine has nothing to thank him for, but he’ll accept anyway. There still is, and will always be, Kurt and New York in the summer, but for now there’s being Blaine’s friend and having the chance to bask in his reflected glory for a while, the opportunity to kiss him again notwithstanding...

 

**FIN**


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